Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Contracts of three Georgia assistant football coaches will not be renewed following the 2009 season according to an announcement Wednesday by UGA head football coach Mark Richt.

Defensive coordinator and secondary coach Willie Martinez, defensive co-coordinator and linebacker coach John Jancek, and defensive ends coach Jon Fabris will not return in 2010 according to Richt; however, he indicated that all three have been asked to coach through the bowl game.

“I cannot express enough my thanks to all three for their contributions to our program,” said Richt. “However, in the final analysis I’m charged with providing the leadership and direction for the Georgia program and sometimes that means making difficult decisions. This was one of them.”

Martinez and Fabris are members of Richt’s original staff that came in 2001. Jancek joined the Georgia staff in 2005.

***Richt will be holding a teleconference this afternoon at 5. I'll keep you posted.

I'll post updates on the blog when I have something concrete, but I'm not going to post any speculation here.

Also, I apologize for not returning emails or responding to comments on the blog. My email account is completely screwed up at the moment (hey, makes reporting so much easier!) and I'm working on getting that fixed, too.

As for the initial reports, I think the AJC's Jeff Schultz does a nice job of summing them up (with an excellent use of quotation marks to indicate sarcasm). Remember folks, "unconfirmed reports" and "I'm hearing" are far from facts, so treat them accordingly.

I am by no means a Willie Martinez fan, however, I believe it would be foolish to fire him until a proven, qualified, battle hardened replacement is hired.

Who among us would have bet that the Dawgs would hold GT to only 3 points in the first half? In what I personally feel was the DAWGS first complete game of the season, does the credit for the defenses success go to Martinez or to players who executed his game plan to near perfection?

When it comes to finding a replacement for Martinez, we would be well advised to make sure we have one foot on second base before we take our other foot off of first.

Forget about Defensive Coordinators we could have hired, the question is who can we hire? Anyone have any names of proven winners that are looking for a job?

Well, I guess now we can stop the insinuating that Richt is too loyal for his own good. I think firing Willie is proof that he will do what it takes. I feel bad for Willie, he was a good guy, but needed to go.

I'm having a celebration that Fabris was fired, on the other hand.

The question now is: where do we go from here? Who will the leading candidates be?

Now that it has been officially confirmed, I admit to a certain feeling of sadness. I know that changes had to be made and I'm glad that Georgia Football continues to move forward, but still... I feel sad about the situation, sad for what must have been an incredibly tough decision for Coach Richt to make and sad that three Bulldogs will no longer call Athens their home. Because, really, once you're a Bulldog, you're always a Bulldog. Good or bad, you fought under our colors and that matters to me.

Besides, Athens is a great town and I'm still sad about moving away 13 years ago. So maybe I'm just a sad sort of person. But I can also admit to feeling a certain energy and excitement for the future. After watching the post-game interview with Mark Richt, I felt a tremendous boost of confidence in our coach. The expression on his face and his overall demeanor showed me the undeniable passion that Coach Richt has for the Dawgs. And that's not something to be sad about at all.

I am using Bulldogs Blog as my forum to officially announce my candidacy for the HC position at UGA. I am completely underqualified (although I am coaching a 5 yr old T-ball team in the spring), but I swear to yell random encouragements every time my boys get back on the sideline (ala the Cajun coach in Waterboy)...and every player gets 1 a$$ smack per tackle. I am also a bargain as I will only require double my current salary, 1 box of Twinkies to be delivered by 7am every morning, and exclusive rights to skinny dip in the UGA swimming complex after 11pm. Additionally, I will coach special teams...well, I won't really coach, but I'm sure my strategy of telling Blair Walsh to "just kick the $h!t out of it every time" will be far more successful than the strategy utilized in the past few years. Thank you for your consideration....

P.S. I hate Gators...I believe I failed to mention that in my list of qualifications

So we pretty much got rid of the entire defensive staff (save Garner). Does that just mean we promote Garner to DC and let him pick his staff? Or do you think Richt already has somebody lined up, and that person has a staff assembled to bring in?

Garner should have been let go or at least let the new DC determine if he wanted to keep him. Our defensive line has not played well for at least two years. Check out the points we have given up. A great deal of that was giving up runs. It was a total defensive failure which include the line coach. The line did not do anything until we had an effective DE. So why could the coaches not have changed the strategy when they knew they did not have a DE. Ala kicked our ass while Utah kicked Ala ass. Our linemen sit in the same postions while the Fla team turns around like lemmings and receives the adjustments based onthe way our defense is set up. Then we give up big plays.

This is like one of those break ups where both parties kind of understand it had to be. Sometimes times were good, really good. But there were also some really bad times. One thing was for sure, it was definitely not going to lead to marriage... er... championships.

That's probably what was most frustrating about the WM era: moments of brilliants juxtaposed against moments of sheer incompetence.

David Pollack for Defensive Ends coach anybody? Might explain how he knew about the firings so early. Though maybe Richt wants to avoid hiring old friends now that he knows how it feels to let them hang.

The comments of "sad" are unbelievable. These guys are paid to perform....and perform they didn't. Kudos to Richt for realizing the severity of underperformance. This dismissal also confirms that Martinez and crew were likely put on notice after last year and that improvement would be required.

There is one candidate worthy or replacing Martinez and should be target #1....at all costs. His defensive unit was #3 in rush defense nationally, #4 in pass defense nationally and #2 in total defense nationally this year.

And regarding the whole "they have families" thing, yeah I get it, but they've also seen the deterioration first hand for four years now. The ball was in their court and they decided to leave things unchanged. I hope Jancek and Fabris like the challenge of finding work as much as they liked the challenge of directional kicking.

And, before anyone says "2007, 2007 we were so good we finished #2" please keep in mind that 10-2 this year in college football would get you a #8 ranking and a Capital One bowl berth. Additionally, in that magical 2007 year, we were calling for Willie's head leading up to the Vandy and Florida games, but calmed down after the way we finished the season.

And, not to drone, but look at the way we finished the 2007 season - needed four quarters to permanently take the lead against Auburn, needed three quarters to permanently take the lead at home against Kentucky and needed two fortunate bounces on fumbles in our own end zone to avoid being upset at Tech. In between that, we also surrendered 34 points to Troy and only won by 10. Then we beat a crappy Hawaii team. So yes, I would say this has been a four year decline.

Erik - since 2005, TCU has beaten: Stanford, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Boise St, Clemson, Virginia, Utah, BYU....and let us not forget that the Mountain West (Utah) is the conference that bitch-slapped Alabama last year in the Sugar Bowl. Nobody....and I mean nobody wants to play a Patterson/Bumpas coached TCU!

We (Georgia fans) complain that our coaches do not coach-up...take a look at the talent on the defensive unit for TCU over the past four years. TCU traditionally gets the leftovers from Texas, Oklahoma, TTech and even Baylor in recruiting (however better nowadays). These kids are coached-up!!! Bumpas ain't pretty (nor was Vangorder).... but he gets the job done!

For Travis if you are still there: if someone has not responded about special team coach, UGA has no specific job description for that but it seems Fabris has been the man, and information I got most likely from this blog.

I AM NOT AN EXPERT IN FOOTBALL. BUT I THINK DEFENSIVE COACHES AND COORDINATORS PERSONALITY MAY NEED TO BE SOME WHAT MORE ABRASIVE THAN THE THREE UGA JUST FIRED, AND THIS MAY NOT MESH WELL WITH THE PERSONALITY OF MARK RICHT. i WONDER IF THIS CAN A PROBLEM INTO GETTING MORE APPROPRIATE COACHES IF NOT EXCELLENT ONES.

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About the Author

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made.

Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.

These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."